Jay-Z has taken the world of sports agents by storm in a little over a month, kind of like the Dodgers' Yasiel Puig has done with the MLB. Perhaps he sees something in common with the Cuban rookie, as he's interested in signing Puig and his countryman, the A's' Yoenis Cespedes, to Roc Nation Sports, per Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Sports.
Jay-Z’s agency targeting Yasiel Puig, Yoenis Cespedes
Welcome to Havana: Jay-Z wants a pair of Cuban baseball players for his sports agency.
Al Bello
Puig is hitting .407 with eight home runs, all while stealing bases and turning singles into doubles and grounders into extra bases, leading to widespread debate whether he should go to the All-Star Game with less than 50 games under his belt. He reportedly met with Jay-Z in New York in June and left the meeting “intrigued.”
Cespedes isn’t having as much success in his second year, but finished 10th in AL MVP voting last year for a year he hit .292 with 23 homers. He’s got 15 homers, but his average is down at .224.
It might not be the wisest idea from an agent’s perspective -- Puig’s previous agent, Jaime Torres, would get full commission until his seven-year deal expires, and Cespedes still has two years left on his deal -- but maybe Jay-Z sees something marketable in the Cuban pair.
Personally, I see this as another sign of evidence for Hov’s fetish for Cuba, and as a half-Cuban who has gone on record fetishizing Cuba, I think I would know. Jay-Z started out by rapping, “Welcome to Havana/smoking Cubanos with Castro in cabanas,” something which I thought was ludicrous, because he’d pretty clearly never been to Cuba at the time. (Much less, you know, smoked cigars with the still-somehow-alive dictator who hasn’t been seen in public in years.) He followed up on it, though, by visiting the country with his wife Beyonce for their fifth anniversary, causing a bit of an uproar due to the sanctions on visiting the communist island.
Although he has no experience as an agent, getting certified in the MLB less than a month ago, athletes have seized on the ability to sign with Jay-Z, seeing unique opportunities in being affiliated with the cultural icon. He's already got Kevin Durant, Geno Smith, and Robinson Cano in tow, taking a shot at Cano's previous agent Scott Boras on his album released Tuesday. (He also took a shot at the NFLPA with regards to his courtship of Geno Smith on the album.)
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